VITAC: Reformatting Captions for your Binge Watching Pleasure

Binge watching seems to be the way to enjoy a series these days, with video-on-demand content streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.

For a monthly fee, you have seasons upon seasons of television shows at your fingertips, whether they’re that service’s original series, or it aired on network or cable television previously.

It’s a new era, with programs finally working around your schedule. If you’re just now getting around to watching a series, you may not realize that the closed captions may have had to go through some changes from the way they were originally broadcast, way before you press “play”.

When a content provider agrees to a deal with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or any other Subscription Video-On-Demand service to furnish so many hours of their content to that library, most of that content needs to be captioned. The original caption files may need to be reformatted for a number of reasons including:

The shows were originally captioned in roll-up style (most SVODs require pop-on style).

The content provider can’t find the original matching caption file (this happens when shows get edited through the years).

The video needs to be edited before being delivered to an SVOD service, meaning the captions won’t sync up.

VITAC can help caption libraries for SVODs. We have experience reformatting libraries for quick delivery for everything from shows like “The Waltons” to Red Bull. Contact us today for more details.